4 Constitutional Debates America's Founders Never Saw Coming

Although the Founding Fathers tried to make the Constitution flexible enough to deal with unforeseen future exigencies, there's some shit they couldn't possibly have imagined -- namely, constitutional issues involving underwear or computers or the act of looking at people without underwear on computers. And because Ben Franklin failed to predict the Internet, we're now dealing with constitutional debates such as ...

#4. Should Schoolteachers Be Required to Wear Underwear?

Teachers going commando is apparently such a problem for a Little Rock school district that they've had to implement a dress code specifically requiring teachers to at least put on a G-string when they come to work. However, the code also specifies that the cut and style of the underwear can't be discernible through the clothing, so how they plan on making sure nobody's freeballing on the sly is unclear.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, the teachers union is contemplating legal action after their school said teachers could no longer wear shorts or jeans to work. Presumably the plaintiffs are mostly art teachers who will now have to resort to rapping as their only technique to make the kids think they're cool.

#3. Should Legally Blind People Be Allowed to Carry Guns?

While most states require that anybody wanting to own a gun must be able to see what the hell they're shooting at, Iowa has said "fuck that" with a side order of fries and extended Second Amendment rights to the visually impaired. Jane Hudson, director of Disability Rights Iowa, remarked, "The fact that you can't drive a car doesn't mean you can't go to a shooting range and see a target."

Photos.comSeconds later she was run over by a blind man returning from the shooting range.

For the uninformed, "legally blind" doesn't necessarily mean that you can't see at all, just that, even with glasses on, you can't see at 20 feet what others see at 200. If you ask us, both sides of the debate should just split the difference and teach seeing-eye Labradors how to use Howitzers.

#2. Can Women Walk Around Topless?

A Massachusetts woman named Stacey so enjoys the breeze around her gazongas that she has started lobbying for the right to display them loud and proud, mostly by "striking up conversation about her campaign when possible." Oh, and by actually going around bare-torsoed.

This fascinating debate isn't new. Many cities already allow ladies to show their ladies with impunity, but it varies from place to place, so check your local listings before you waltz on down to Sheetz stripped to the waist. For Stacey, Massachusetts' draconian nudity laws presently define nudity as "uncovered or less than opaquely covered human genitals, pubic areas, the human female breast below a point immediately above the top of the areola, or the covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state." (Somewhere, deep in the Law Library of the Damned, there is likely an entire body of jurisprudence devoted to acceptable definitions of "discernibly turgid.")

#1. Should We Be Allowed to Watch Porn in Public Libraries?

A Seattle woman was harshly chastised by her local library staff after she became embroiled in an argument over watching porn on a public library computer. Oh, no, she wasn't watching porn -- she was asking the dude next to her to take that "Private Browsing" session somewhere actually private, and the librarians not-so-kindly asked her -- and her three young children, who were present -- to mind their own damn business.

Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty ImagesWhere was this library when we were 13 and had to get by on their "Loremasters of the Amazon" issue of National Geographic?

You see, Seattle -- along with many other library systems across the land -- have a longstanding tradition of allowing citizens who are unable to afford a high-speed connection to come in and watch Coach, My Ass Is the Stadium: Volume 15, arguing that this isn't so much about allowing people to load up their spank bank as it is about preventing censorship.

On one hand, we understand that some people do look at porn for legitimate reasons, like if you're doing your thesis on Sasha Grey's oeuvre. On the other hand, if the legion of unemployed, bearded men all writing their dissertations on Blow-Job Deli 39 -- on computers underneath a banner of the Berenstain Bears extolling the joys of the Dewey Decimal System, no less -- represent a cross-section of the American mind, who's studying all the science and literature?